Telecommunications networks establish a very high number of individual circuits. The telecommunications network may connect an end user site to a switch that connects the end user site to another end user site at the request of either of the end user sites, such as in the case of conventional telephone calls. The telecommunications network may also permanently connect an end user site to another end user site such as to establish a dedicated communication channel for exchanging data.
It may be desirable to provide diversity between two or more circuits within a telecommunications network. For example, an end user may require redundant circuits to ensure that if one circuit goes down, the other remains available. Banks, emergency services, and the like are examples of such entities. By maintaining circuit diversity, the likelihood of the back-up circuit being available even when the primary circuit has failed is higher because the source of the failure is likely to be isolated from the backup circuit. Thus, maintaining circuit diversity requires that the telecommunications provider prevent circuits that are to be diverse from one another from sharing a common point of potential failure.
The task of maintaining circuit diversity is a difficult one. The elements that factor into maintaining diversity include the immense number of telecommunications circuits that exist, the immense number of locations where failures for a given circuit may occur, the large numbers of circuits that may need to have diversity relative to one or more other circuits, and the high frequency of changes occurring with the telecommunications network due to orders for new circuits, cancellation of circuits, repairs of circuits, and so forth.